Wild Island Read online

  First published in 2016

  Copyright © Jennifer Livett

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone:(61 2) 8425 0100

  Email:[email protected]

  Web:www.allenandunwin.com

  Cataloguing-in-Publication details are available from the National Library of Australia

  www.trove.nla.gov.au

  ISBN 9781760113834

  ISBN 9781952534850

  Set by Bookhouse, Sydney

  Cover design: Alissa Dinallo

  Cover image: Elisabeth Ansley / Trevillion Images

  TZARA: It means, my dear Henry, that the causes we know everything about depend on causes we know very little about, which depend on causes we know absolutely nothing about. And it is the duty of the artist to jeer and howl and belch at the delusion that infinite generations of real effects can be inferred from the gross expression of apparent cause.

  Tom Stoppard, Travesties

  CONTENTS

  LIST OF HISTORICAL CHARACTERS

  LIST OF FICTIONAL CHARACTERS

  PROLOGUE

  PART ONE

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  PART TWO

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  PART THREE

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  List of historical characters

  Sir John Franklin Arctic explorer; Lieutenant Governor of Van Diemen’s Land (VDL), 1837–44

  Jane Franklin His wife

  Eleanor Franklin Sir John’s daughter by his first wife, Eleanor Porden

  Miss Williamson Governess to Eleanor Franklin

  Sophy Cracroft Jane Franklin’s companion; niece to Sir John

  Mary Franklin Jane Franklin’s companion; niece to Sir John

  Henry Elliot Sir John’s young aide-de-camp

  Charles O’Hara Booth Captain in the 21st Regiment; Commandant of Port Arthur Penal Station in VDL, 1833–44

  Colonel George Arthur Lieutenant Governor of VDL for twelve years before Franklin was appointed

  Eliza Arthur His wife

  Archdeacon Hutchins Came to VDL with the Franklins

  Alexander Maconochie Geographer, convict reformer and former naval officer; came to VDL with the Franklins as Sir John’s private secretary

  Mary Maconochie His wife

  Dr Pilkington Surgeon to the 21st Regiment in VDL

  Lizzie Eagle Dr Pilkington’s stepdaughter

  Thomas Lempriere Commissariat Officer at Port Arthur Penal Station

  Charlotte Lempriere His wife

  Dr Cornelius Gavin Casey Medico at Port Arthur

  George Boyes Colonial Auditor in VDL, later Acting Colonial Secretary

  ‘Bobby’ Knopwood Chaplain in Hobart Town, VDL, since settlement

  John Montagu Colonial Secretary in VDL

  Matthew Forster Chief Police Magistrate in VDL

  ‘Mad’ Judge Montagu Judge in VDL; no relation to John Montagu

  John Price Police Magistrate in VDL

  Charles Swanston Director of the Derwent Bank in Hobart Town

  Thomas Gregson Wealthy owner of ‘Risdon’, or ‘Restdown’, in VDL; later briefly Premier of Tasmania

  Picton Beete, Wharton Young and John Peddie Charles Booth’s friends in the 21st Regiment

  John Gould The ‘Bird Man’: taxidermist, bird illustrator and collector

  Eliza Gould Artist; wife to John Gould

  Mathinna Aboriginal child taken in by Jane Franklin

  Duterrau Artist

  Miss Perigal Duterrau’s sister-in-law

  Thomas Boch Artist and former convict

  Tom Cracroft Brother to Sophy Cracroft; a clerk in Sir John Franklin’s office in VDL

  Arthur Sweet Clerk; friend to Tom Cracroft

  John Philip Gell Young clergyman sent from England by Dr Arnold of ‘Rugby’ to be Head of the new VDL College

  Captain Ainsworth Later Major; aide to Sir John Franklin; courting Sophy Cracroft

  Captain James Clark Ross Commander of the Erebus, Arctic explorer, leader of the ‘Magnetic Expedition’ of 1839–41

  Captain Francis Crozier Commander of the Terror, Arctic explorer, Ross’s close friend and second-in-command of the ‘Magnetic Expedition’; courting Sophy Cracroft

  Lieutenant Henry Porden Kay Cousin to Eleanor Franklin; came to VDL with the ‘Magnetic Expedition’

  ‘Mick’ (Thomas) Walker Convict who, as leader of seven other convicts, escaped from Port Arthur in a whaleboat in 1839

  Laplace Captain of the French exploratory ship L’Artémise

  Mr Aislabie Clergyman at Richmond, VDL

  ‘Tulip’ Wright Constable in Hobart Town

  List of fictional characters

  Jane Eyre Orphan; governess at ‘Thornfield Hall’

  Edward Rochester Owner of ‘Thornfield’

  Adèle Pupil to Jane Eyre; Edward Rochester’s ward

  Rowland Rochester Older brother to Edward

  Mrs Alice Fairfax Housekeeper at ‘Thornfield Hall’; poor relation to the Rochesters

  Bertha Mason Woman from the West Indies, possibly mad . . .

  Grace Poole Bertha Mason’s keeper

  Harriet Adair Artist; a widow

  Nina Harriet’s stepmother

  Gus Bergman Surveyor in VDL

  St John Wallace Clergyman; cousin to Jane Eyre

  Louisa Wallace His wife

  George Quigley Captain of the Adastra

  Mr and Mrs Chesney Property owners in VDL; passengers on the Adastra

  Polly and Natty Their grandchildren

  Lyddy Nurserymaid to Ned Chesney

  James Seymour Doctor; passenger on the Adastra

  Robert McLeod Newspaperman; passenger on the Adastra

  Mrs T (Tench) Sailor-woman on the Adastra

  Peg Groundwater Lodging-house keeper in VDL; an Orkney woman

  Nellie Jack Peg’s convict servant

  Mrs Parry Property owner in VDL; friend to Knopwood

  Augusta Drewitt Friend to Sophy Cracroft

  Ada Sweet Shopkeeper; mother to Arthur Sweet

  Seth Carmichael Former convict; landlord of the Eagle and Child Inn at New Norfolk; later a horse-breeder

  Dinah Carmichael His wife

  Catherine Tyndale Wife to a lieutenant in the 21st Regiment when it was in the West Indies

  Prologue

  READER, SHE DID NOT MARRY HIM. OR RATHER, WHEN AT LAST she did, it was not so straightforward as she implies in her memoirs. Jane Eyre is a truthful person and her story is fascinating, but some things she could not bring herself to say. Certain episodes in her
past, she admits, ‘form too distressing a recollection ever to be willingly dwelt upon’. When she announces in that jubilant sentence, ‘Reader, I married him’, and goes on to describe their quiet Church wedding, she is choosing to ignore the hasty ceremony that had taken place on the ship two months before.

  They were married again when they returned to England—to make doubly certain all was legal, to sign their names in the parish records. Why mention that earlier wedding, so sombre, so desperate? In the heaving, creaking old Adastra on her way to the colony they never reached, with the fear of imminent death, and the odd little group of witnesses, of whom I was one.

  My name is Harriet Adair, and forty years ago on that ship I was Jane Eyre’s companion. That voyage also brought me friendship with another intrepid Jane: Lady Franklin. Her husband, Sir John, the Arctic Lion, was Lieutenant Governor of Van Diemen’s Land during the six turbulent years when Jane Eyre and Edward Rochester had good reason to be closely interested in the island.

  It is now, as I have said, four decades since that time, and those of us who know what really happened—about the Franklin debâcle, and the Rochester matter—become fewer each year. Mr Gregson therefore asked me to write my account of those days, which he intended to collate with his own and several others, but he died two years ago, and now all the papers have been passed to George Boyes’s son. On the understanding, of course, that they shall not be used while any of those closely involved are still alive. I feel certain now that this will be necessary. Visiting London recently, I found my old friend, Sophy Cracroft, Sir John Franklin’s niece and Jane Franklin’s long-time companion, copying out Lady Franklin’s letters for publication—but she is editing them ruthlessly, deleting whole paragraphs and pages. She destroys each original as she finishes it. Some she burns without copying. When she told me I cried out, ‘How can you, Sophy? This is our history, our lives.’

  She gave me one of her steely looks, half amused, half irritated. When she was young, she was slim, almost angular in a way that always seemed to me part of her character, but now in later life she is stout, with plump rosy cheeks that give her a benevolent look. This is misleading; her mind is as angular as ever.

  ‘Our history?’ she said. ‘I was always taught, Harriet, that history is the record of great men’s achievements. My uncle’s discovery of the Northwest Passage is the true history of my life . . .’

  Sophy loved her Aunt Jane dearly, but she comes from a devout Low-Church family and has severe ideas. She therefore intends to obscure Jane Franklin’s part in those events in Van Diemen’s Land that changed so many lives and led to Franklin’s last fatal Arctic expedition. When Sir John vanished into the ice with the Erebus and Terror not much more than a year after the Franklins’ return to London, Jane and Sophy were determined to save him. If physical rescue should prove impossible, then his fame at least must be preserved. For years they pleaded and flattered to raise money for search parties; they evaded the Admiralty’s attempts to declare him dead, and fought the appalling claims of cannibalism. During the course of all this, Sophy came to believe that sometimes the end does justify the means. The destruction of her aunt’s pages is nothing, now.

  Any beginning must be somewhat arbitrary; we have agreed to start with the Franklins’ arrival in Van Diemen’s Land in January 1837. Someone else must tell it, since I did not arrive in the island until a year later—but those who were there have not forgotten.

  1

  BOOTH SHOULD HAVE BEEN IN HOBART TO ATTEND A HANGING that day. As Commandant of Port Arthur, the main penal station of Van Diemen’s Land, he was required to witness certain judicial deaths; but on that January day in 1837, he was still in bed at seven in the morning. Most unusual for him, but it was not self-indulgence: rather, a soldier’s habit of catching up on sleep when the opportunity arises. The weather had trapped him down at his station, on an isolated promontory eighty miles south-east of the town. Only two weeks until midsummer, and yet the wind had blown foully for three days: a strong sou’westerly with showers of rain, spitefully cold.

  The day before, when the gales seemed to be dropping, he’d walked the five miles up the peninsula to the outstation at the coal mines, to see whether the Vansittart, the Government cutter, had managed to get down the estuary to pick him up. Even as he strode along he knew it would not be there. The wind was rising again, and on his way back he was caught in rain like the coming of the Flood. He reached his cottage again at half-past nine that evening, drenched and shivering, and immediately stripped and went to bed, giving Power orders not to call him until eight in the morning.

  But the first muster bell brought him wide-awake at half-past five, and he lay listening to a shutter banging, the rushing wind, and thinking of his beloved semaphore stations. They would have to be kept closed again today. They were on hilltops, bore the brunt of the weather. Wind fretted and tangled the ropes, banged pulley-blocks against the masts, caused havoc if you let it. But if the duty men had frapped the arms down securely there should not be too much damage. If they’d taken care to keep the arm-lines separate from the haul-lines as he was always reminding them . . . The semaphores had brought him this appointment as Commandant, and not a day passed but he thanked God for it. Well, God and the former Lieutenant Governor, Colonel George Arthur. Two of a kind, really.

  The job was a wonderful little plum: wholly unexpected at the time. Booth had arrived in Van Diemen’s Land early in ’33 with the Regiment, had waited on Governor Arthur and been frostily received. A cool word and out. Slightly alarming, since Booth’s posting here—his life for the next six, eight, even twelve years—depended on Arthur. Did this mean His Excellency had heard of Booth’s old court martial? The goat in the wardroom, the turtle in the bath? Stupid pranks which had seemed so amusingly necessary at that miserable time in the Indies more than a decade ago. It was all in the records; the Governor was sure to know.

  He could not have heard of Booth’s other sin? No, that was not in the records.

  Booth had been left apparently forgotten in the barracks while his friends received placements, until at last there came an invitation to dine at Government House. His hopes rose, collapsed again as soon as he entered the reception room. He’d been warned that the Arthurs were strictly Evangelical, but this was so stark, comfortless, puritanical. What followed was more of the same. Conversation, stilted. One glass of bad Cape wine, a lengthy Grace and a dinner best forgotten. A meagre, dry occasion like the Governor himself. Although, Heavens Above, quiet little Eliza Arthur under her plain black gown was big with her thirteenth child. Arthur was fifty-one and she would be forty, surely. There must be juice in him somewhere.

  The Arthurs’ eldest son, Frederick, sat next to Booth. A pleasant lad, but too quiet. Seventeen: all knobbly wrists, Adam’s apple, boots and blushing. He was really the second son, but his older brother, George, had died of consumption a few years before. Booth set himself to amuse young Fred. Uphill work. But just when the evening seemed interminable, a tumble of young children and half-grown daughters came in with the pudding.

  Eliza Arthur grew motherly and the Governor unbent so far as to smile when a beautiful little girl recited her memory-work for the week, a psalm. Deal bountifully with thy servant . . . in a pure, piping little voice, then a breathy hesitation . . . I am a stranger in the earth . . . The little girl came across to Fred to be hoisted onto his lap. She told Booth, ‘I am Fanny but I am called Mary. I am seven.’ Booth’s heart contorted and bled from the old wound because his own daughter would have been nine if he had not left her, his wife and son seven years ago in the West Indies, where they had died in penury probably.

  But beautiful little Mary was continuing: George, Fred, Bella, Kate, Georgina, Eliza, Charlie, Edward, Sigi, John, Leonard. Her brothers and sisters. (Sigi?) Words had deserted Booth because the names of his own lost ones were filling his mind. Caralin, Rosa, Charlie. The irony being that he never had any trouble talking to children, nor indeed to anyone for that matter. Now M
ary had given up waiting for him to say something sensible and was unfolding a drawing, a line of little stick men across the page.

  ‘Soldiers,’ he said, grasping. ‘Making a signal, I think. A semaphore with flags? What are they saying, I wonder?’

  ‘Why, so they are,’ said Arthur, sternly mild. ‘I believe they are saying Mary has done well and may have her jam pudding.’

  Later, when the women and children were gone, Arthur said, ‘Semaphores have been much in my mind.’

  He wanted a network of signal towers to serve the south-east of Van Diemen’s Land. To cover the distance between Hobart—here, the main harbour and centre of Government—and Port Arthur, his new penal settlement. Port Arthur had been a small timber-cutting camp, but would now become the main penal station of the island, replacing the old prisons at Sarah Island on the Wild West Coast, and Maria Island in the east. These had proved impractical because they were too far from Hobart Town, and communication could only be by sea, with its delays and dangers. But Port Arthur was only eighty miles away, and with semaphores . . . How many stations did Booth think would be needed over that distance? Could it be done—with convict labour and assistance from the Survey Department, of course? Booth was certain it could.

  Within a few days, Captain Charles O’Hara Booth, latterly of blotted copybook and uncertain prospects, was Commandant of Port Arthur. Now, four years later, seven semaphores were in place, each with six moveable arms on its mast, allowing the signalling of numbers up to 999,999 with the addition of a jack staff and pennants. Each number represented a word or phrase in the codebook of Booth’s devising. They were only using two hundred and twenty-seven numbers so far, but that would increase. At present a short signal and response could be returned in seven minutes. Booth thought they could get it down to four minutes if they built two more stations next year.

  I mean this year, he amended his thoughts. Already January again, so soon. Nearly four years ‘at the ends of the earth’ as his sister Char said in her letters—but it was paradise to him. Everywhere in the landscape there was beauty barely explored, a new Eden. All he needed was a new Eve. Could he marry Lizzie this year? Should he? At Christmas there had been a rumour of the Regiment’s recall; he discovered he was desperate to remain on the island. He had fallen by grace into a place he loved, and work he believed valuable, but how could he stay? Sell out of the Army? The sale of his commission would not keep him long, and some of it must be returned to Char, who had lent him money. And what civil position could he find here? Especially one that paid what he was earning now, and provided a free cottage. His salary was two hundred and seventy-three pounds fifteen shillings per annum, with a magistrate’s allowance of ten shillings a day on top, but he always spent it all, and in fact, owed his agent twenty pounds at this moment.